Bring Back Supermarket Sweep!

I need groceries.

Taking stock of what's left around here has produced the following results: The only food items left in my house seem to be 4 kinds of Tabasco sauce, Swiss Chalet Au Jus mix, some free cereal samples (I can't believe that you can get 'Wheetabix' in a sample size), and a package of Premium Plus crackers - and thank God for those. If you don't have saltine crackers, you've truly hit rock bottom on the food supply.

Luckily, I haven't succumbed to that point where I'm eating just random food, believing that I'll manage to stumble into some awesome flavour combination. I'll say 'no' for now to the old mustard-and-soy sauce-on-stoned wheat thins sandwiches (although thinking about it is getting me curious, mostly due to the sodium content). So barring any descent into culinary madness, I'll be fine just waiting until shopping time, but that shopping experience will be so fucking boring.

Shopping for groceries is the height of tedium. I will have to endure hours of trying to get around not-looking senior citizens and out-of-control brats, dodging them in the parking lot, in the aisles, around the checkout lines, and back again in the parking lot. I'll grab a shopping cart, and try to have some fun with it, but it just doesn't have the turning radius and stopping efficiency needed to avoid breaking shit or annoying people. Contrary to popular/idiotic belief, there are never any beautiful women in the store, just moms, with their hell-spawn children, screaming and spanking and trying to corral what little control they have. I never buy what I should, and I always forget to buy the necessities (like milk), instead purchasing poorly thought through impulse items (like a plush kleenex box cover). Pretty shitty deal, but it can be so much more.

I ask simply for the triumphant return of Supermarket Sweep to transform grocery shopping into a fun, exciting competitive event. For those of you who cannot remember this show, in either its US or Canadian form, here is an informative video:



Just thinking about whizzing past aisles in my cart, paying no heed to the laws of physics, or the polite ethics of modern western society, and I get all bubbly inside. I just want to run and grab and grab and run, and this show would let me do it! Granted, the show is set on a stage, and according to one contestant, the crowd is non-existant (goodbye to another fantasy), but the thrill of the hunt and chase are still there.

So I'm mentally ready for the Big Sweep. I need to be physically ready, and I need on site knowledge. I am going to start training for the (obvious) eventual return of the show during my next shopping excursion. I am going to visualize my shopping needs, then proceed to attempt to shop for groceries in the least time possible. I will not listen to the cries of protest from the staff nor other shoppers, as that will only distract me from my goal. Of course, any groceries that I collect during my training period won't be paid for, or put back into their original locations, but that's Safeway's problem, not mine. I'm an athlete. I'm a supermarket superstar.